Monday Morning Coffee: When it comes to #VoterID, voters are polls apart.

Ron Bukowski and Gary Miller stand on opposite shores in this summer’s debate over Pennsylvania’s new voter identification law.

As he strolled through the Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley in Lehigh County on a blindingly sunny afternoon last week, Bukowski, 71, a Republican from Reading, said it’s a part of life for people to show photo identification to do most things these days. And he’s skeptical of arguments raised by the law’s critics that it’s hard to get the right kind of ID to vote.

But even Bukowski acknowledged that he “could see the perception that the law would be unfair. My mother never had a driver’s license. She would not have had photo ID,” he also allowed that “it’s not difficult to get it.”

Further down the promenade, Miller, 67, a Democrat from Williams Township, Northampton County, relaxed in the shade of a pavilion with a cup of coffee and that day’s copy of the New York Times. He didn’t mince words when it came to the new law, which requires people to show photo identification every time they vote.

“It’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said, referring to arguments made by supporters that the law will reduce election fraud. “This law will disenfranchise tens of thousands of people.”

Miller, a former chaplain at Lafayette College, dismissed the law as little more than an effort by Republicans to tilt the fall election in their favor – a common criticism lodged by its opponents in this ost political of seasons.

Ultimately, the challengers, who are predicting pandemonium at the polls, want the law declared unconstitutional and stricken from the books.

Judge Robert E. Simpson, a Republican, and a former Northampton County court judge, is expected to release his ruling sometime this week in the nationally watched case. But no matter how he rules, the week-long lower court argument was widely viewed as a dress rehearsal for an appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The arguments raised by Bukowski and Miller also closely echoed those raised by attorneys on both sides of the case.

Opponents have argued that the Republican-authored law will result in tens of thousands of people being turned away at the polls on Election Day because they lack proper identification. They argue that the law will disproportionately impact the poor, the aged, younger voters and minorities – all of whom have historically voted Democrat.

Supporters say the law will not only root out voter fraud but also result in more smoothly run elections. In court, lawyers for the state argued that lawmakers were within their rights to pass the bill and that the state was making strenuous efforts to educate voters on its requirements.

But the sharp – and sometimes partisan -- arguments that played out in Simpson’s courtroom in Harrisburg elicited mostly a shrug during a series of interviews with local voters – including those whom opponents say will be most directly affected if it’s allowed to stand.

As he waited for the bus in Allentown, Julio Castillo, 36, who doesn’t drive, said he doesn’t see much of a problem asking for people to show photo identification before they can vote.

“Anybody can go in there with a name,” he said. “They can make a fake name.”

Kiamesha Green, 32, a mother of three and a registered Democrat, was also waiting for a bus to take her the Lehigh Valley Mall, where she planned to search for a job. She’s planning to vote and has the non-driver’s photo identification card issued by the state Department of Transportation that’s an allowable form of ID under the law.

“I think it’s fair,” she said. “It’s common to have to show your ID.”

Joey Russo, 44, who identified himself as a “Democrat, but not necessarily a liberal,” said he had the non-driver’s photo identification card but lost it. He wants to get a replacement, but “it’s tough with my work schedule,”

A Navy veteran, Russo said he’s banking on using his military identification card – also an allowable form of ID – to cast his vote on Election Day.

State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, who’s emerged as one of the most forceful public opponents of the law, said he’s had similar conversations with people who shrug off what he believes are the law’s onerous voting requirements and the cynical motivations behind it.

But according to Leach, once the barriers to voting raised by the law are made clear, those skeptics change their minds.

“They say, ‘So that’s what it’s all about,’ and they want nothing to do with it,” Leach, the chairman of the Senate Democrats’ fall re-election effort, said last week.

Opponents of the law “would like us to believe that someone who can’t board an airplane or open a checking account or do many of the things that every day life requires should be allowed to waltz into a polling place and vote,” Gerow said last week.

But most voters believe “this a commonsense approach and a rational and reasonable proposal,” he said.

Ultimately, it will be up to an appellate court judge -- who is also facing voters in a once-a-decade retention election this fall -- to make the call.

The rest of today's news starts now:

Pennsylvania's Small Cities ... ... may be struggling every day to pay their bills, but legislative relief for them is, at best, still months away, key state lawmakers tell the Times-Tribune of Scranton this morning. Lawmakers expect to introduce bills with the start of the new legislative session in 2013, with debate coming in that non-election year, the newspaper reported.